Building bridges

Bridge buff Henry Litwhiler explores the good deeds undertaken by your hyper-productive classmates.

Maybe you’ve been living under a socially irresponsible rock, maybe you tune out at the utterance of the word “engineers,” or maybe you don’t trust people who don’t recognize boundaries. Whatever your excuse for ignoring the activities of Columbia’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders, forget it for a moment and appreciate the good things your fellow students do in their free time.

Columbia EWB’s mission is to help build and maintain infrastructure projects in areas that wouldn’t otherwise have access to adequate funding and expertise. The organization currently maintains multiple projects in each of three African countries (Uganda, Morocco, and Ghana) and relies chiefly on student labor and the generosity of outside donors and volunteers to support its operations.

In Uganda, EWB-CU has organized the installation of a diesel generator and a rainwater collection unit; in Morocco, a bridge and a well; and in Ghana, a latrine and a complex water distribution system. Thanks to a recent $10,000 grant from Alcoa, EWB-CU will be able to considerably extend the latter water system. The organization is careful to emphasize, however, that, far from singlehandedly and unilaterally undertaking infrastructure improvements, it coordinates with professionals and local leaders to ensure that the right solutions are found and the right problems addressed.

Eager for an insight into the inner workings of the philanthropic leviathan, I contacted a man with one hand on one of the wheels, co-president Sidney Perkins (SEAS ’17) of ebola suit fame:

Bwog: What will the [Alcoa] grant enable Columbia EWB to undertake?

Sid Perkins: In the Ait Bayoud region of Morocco, women and children often spend as long as 1-2 hours daily fetching water from a local river. The act of retrieving this water is not only time consuming (preventing women and children from pursuing home crafts and education), the water is also often contaminated by run-off from nearby agricultural fields. The generous grant from Alcoa will help us to pay for several kilometers of piping for Izguaren’s water distribution system. When EWB-CU receives grants like this, the organization typically purposes 100% of it toward project costs.

B: How much have you put towards other projects? What are your main sources of funding?

SP: EWB-CU’s primary source of funding is through generous grants such as the one from Alcoa. Each year, we commit just short of $150K in project costs toward our three project sites. Without such grants, the sustainable engineering work that we do in Soroti, Uganda, Obodan and Amanfrom, Ghana, and Ait Bayoud, Morocco simply would not be possible.

B: Why Africa? How do you choose the regions you do?

SP: One of the most important things to understand about EWB as an organization is that we were founded in response to failed attempts of western aid to the developing world. In the past fifty years, millions of dollars have been thrown at development projects without much regard to the long-term. Nonprofits often go into developing communities, identify things that they consider to be problematic, build stop-gate solutions, and then essentially say “good luck.” There are serious issues with this model. Projects are not successful and people continue to be in duress, sans water, sans education, sans proper healthcare.

In response, EWB acknowledges the fact that the people best suited to identify problems in the developing world are those people living there in the first place. EWB’s model is one of response. Communities in need reach out to the national chapter with a project proposal and EWB’s constituent chapters respond by signing on to specific projects. On top of that, EWB requires that chapters follow-up with their partner communities for a set period of time after project implementation to ensure that the ownership of the project has been successfully transferred to the community members.

B: Any plans to expand, or are you focusing on areas with which you already have relationships?

SP: The most responsible thing for our chapter to do is to continue working closely with the communities with which we have current relationships. The key to success is long-term conversation.

B: I understand that EWB is not just for engineers—what other sorts of people do you need?

SP: We have so many roles to fill! We deal not only with engineering issues, but also with sustainability ones. We are looking for talented individuals who can help us to identify the steps our organization needs to take for long-term success. Fundamentally, our aim is to help people, and you don’t have to be an engineer to help people. I encourage anyone who is interested in finding out more to either reach out or swing by one of our meetings.

B: Anything else you think people ought to know about your organization?

SP: One of the greatest things about Engineers Without Borders is its ability to draw from such a wide variety of talented students for its projects. We have students from all four undergraduate schools studying anything from economics to civil engineering. While our membership is primarily comprised of engineers, the opportunities available to students are far from solely technical. It was indeed this exciting breadth of involvement that first drew me to the organization and that continues to make EWB-CU such a special environment. We have chemical engineering students working with future economists and urban studies majors. Where else can you find such an exciting breadth of student engagement in a setting designed to responsibly affect lasting change in the developing world?

EWB-CU is something entirely special. I wouldn’t exchange my experience in this organization for the world. EWB-CU affords students the opportunity not only to study the implementation of real engineering projects, it most crucially emphasizes the importance of coupling the science and the art of engineering.

Columbia Engineers Without Borders will be holding a 5K tomorrow to raise funds for its work. Online signup is closed, but you can still show up at the Wien Courtyard at 8 am with $10 if you want to run.

Bridge over troubled water via EWB-CU